I change

“I think totally differently than I did six months ago.”

My friends seemed stunned when I mentioned that the other evening.

“Really?” they wondered, “Even your Christian beliefs?”

I definitely haven’t changed some of the pillars, like I’m still the guy who will do things just because I haven’t or just because no one else is (for instance, no phone). And I still think Jesus came so we can be good without doing good things.

But a lot of the other stuff? Yeah, it’s changed.

My thoughts on international cultures and what it means to be a culture

My thoughts on friendship and personal identity as a result of those friendships

My thoughts on gay relationships and marriage

My thoughts on what’s important

My thoughts on what I might be doing in a year, though I can’t be sure

My thoughts on a daily basis, because I’m doing things now that six months ago I didn’t know I’d be doing

It probably doesn’t seem all that different to the random person who sees me from the outside. It might not even seem different to the person who’s followed this blog over the past six months.

I say Marshallogue is a record of how I think, but that’s only partially true. I can only share so much here, both because of the limits on how open I’m willing to be and because of the limits on how much time I can spend sharing what I’m thinking.

I wish I could give some current example, but it’s hard for me to talk about what’s happening now. It’s too soon, it’s too now.

So for now, consider how it’s played out in the past, like the difference between a year ago and six months ago. I changed over that period.

I went from knowing a few facts about the Korean War and seeing some posts about teachers in Korea to staying up late at night to interview with schools so I could move to Seoul, South Korea.

I went from realizing how hard it would be on my grandmother for me to move away to finally starting to feel how hard it was going to be for a lot of people I knew, and how I wouldn’t be able to go back to the same place in those relationships.

I went from slowly drifting into minimalism to thinking God wanted me to sell everything I owned, which wouldn’t have brought in much money anyway, to try to help an orphan house find homes for all their kids.

I went from caring very little about do-gooder charity projects to seriously considering how to pursue a career as a director of development after Korea.

I don’t think I explicitly mentioned those here at the time. Some of them, I may not have mentioned anywhere, ever.

All that to say, Marshallogue covers how I think, but it’s only a sampling. And the parts where I’ve changed, the unstable edges of my thoughts, are usually either too subtle for me to notice or too raw for me to expose.

But yes, I’ve changed over the past six months, drastically. I thought everyone felt this way. See, there’s another example of how I’ve changed: I realize now that my friends don’t feel this way. That’s a change, even if it’s small.

And the smallness adds up. After six months, it’s as though I’ve replaced everything, at least in the way I think.